COMMENT
The taste of a spoon
We put stainless steel into our mouths almost
every day and don’t taste a thing. How did we
manage before the discovery of this material?
Mark Miodownik | King’s College London, UK | mark.miodownik@kcl.ac.uk
Bowls of soup make you think. In my experience no
other dish can stimulate the brain in quite the same
way. The other day I was lost in a soup-induced
reverie when two things occurred to me, firstly that
I had forgotten to take the spoon out of my mouth,
and secondly that it had no taste at all – there was
no taste of spoon.
The tongue can
distinguish between
five basic tastes
Taste buds located on the upper surface of the
tongue can distinguish between five basic tastes:
bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami, although ‘fat’
is now becoming a candidate too. These are not
the only components of the sensations associated
with taste. Other important factors include
smell, detected by the nose; texture, detected by
mechanoreceptors; and temperature, detected by
thermoreceptors. In contrast, the taste of inedible
materials like spoons is often discussed in terms
of their chemical reduction potential, in other
words their susceptibility to being oxidized in the
mouth. These potentials have been measured for
most materials and confirm broad trends of taste,
where metals like copper, iron, and aluminum taste
strong. Well, that’s an understatement! No one can
forget the brain-curdling sensation of accidentally
crunching the foil wrapped around a piece of
chocolate. On the other hand, if you suck a piece
of gold jewellery, you’ll find it is almost tasteless.
I specify jewellery because not many people own
gold spoons. They are incredibly expensive and
thought to be rather gauche, so they are only found
in banquets held by lavish dictators where their
presence does nevertheless ensure good taste for
the guests.
6 JUNE 2008 | VOLUME 11 | NUMBER 6
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Before modern times, most people used wooden,
bone, or ceramic spoons. This is because the only
metals that were economically affordable were
iron, brass, bronze, and pewter, all of which give an
unpleasant flavor to food. Plastic spoons came into
use in the 20th century but despite their inertness,
they didn’t make it to the dinner table. To be born
‘with a silver spoon in your mouth’ was a sign of
great fortune and plastic spoons could not compete.
Besides which, polish and glitter are an important
part of the senso-esthetic experience of eating: we
eat with our eyes as well as our mouths. A polished
spoon also says something else to an eager diner, it
speaks of cleanliness in a way that no matt plastic
surface can – witness the obsession with shiny
kitchens and bathrooms. No, the world needed a
new metal as inert as plastic and not as expensive as
silver that would allow everyone to eat like royalty.
Silver- and chrome-plated spoons did make some
inroads into this hierarchical state of culinary affairs
but it was one metallurgist working in Sheffield,
UK, who made the breakthrough, and in doing so
revolutionized every cutlery drawer in the world.
The story goes like this. One day in 1913, Harry
Brearley was given the job of investigating alloys
to create improved gun barrels. He was working in
one of Sheffield’s metallurgy labs, adding different
alloying elements to steel, casting test specimens
and then testing them. His genius was not that he
preserved and organized his specimens because
he didn’t. He tested them and if they didn’t look
promising he chucked them in the corner. His
genius was that when a month later he walked
through the lab and saw a bright gleam in that
pile of rusting specimens, he didn’t ignore it
and go to the pub, but instead he fished out the
one specimen that had not rusted. How could
this be, a steel that doesn’t rust? If anyone had
even suggested this was possible by just adding
chromium, they would have been denounced as
mad, and yet here he was holding in his hand a
miracle – stainless steel.
How could this be,
a steel that doesn’t
rust?
Of course we take it for granted now, and even at
the time, French and German scientists were onto
it, so maybe the ubiquity of stainless steel was
inevitable. It is everywhere now, from shopping
malls to kitchen sinks, from gleaming corporate art
to the spaghetti profusion of corrosion resistant
pipes in chemical plants. In less than 100 years
it has become the metal with which we are the
most intimately acquainted; after all we put it in
our mouth almost every day. Sometimes it is the
absence of something that is most significant.
Next time you drink soup, marvel at the absence
of the taste of the spoon and salute Harry Brearley.
09/05/2008 11:58:40